August 12, 2017
When we woke up this morning we discovered the winds had shifted overnight and the wildfire smoke had blown in. Oh man, it looked awful. We were SO grateful that it hadn’t been like that the previous three days:
We packed up camp and had breakfast. Before we caught our shuttle bus back to the car we walked around the lake to visit Seven Veils Falls:
They recently redid the little side trail and constructed two nice stone viewing decks:
We hiked back to the campground and caught the shuttle bus back to our car, then drove to Lake Louise for a bite to eat. The hustle and bustle of thousands of cars and tourists was jolting after three days at peaceful Lake O’Hara. We drove towards home via Kootenay National Park which was horrendously smoky:
We got as far as Spokane that night. We saw sunset from the freeway and the sun was fiery red from all the wildfire smoke.
When all was said and done, we had a great trip. The smoke was definitely a bummer, and it was incredibly disappointing to miss out on some of the great hikes in the Kaslo area. We’ll have to go back there someday when British Columbia is not on fire. The most important think was that we had good clear weather while at Lake O’Hara. Reservations are hard to get and who knows when we’ll get back there again. That was the part of our trip where it was most important for smoke-free skies and we got it. Thank you, weather gods!
